Not afraid
by mentalguru
Summary: Every boxing day he would visit the grave of the one person he thought could understand. Canon compliant but for those who hated the epilogue for reasons other than shipping. Light Trio and Ginny bashing. Percy Weasley centric.


_**Title: **Not afraid_

_**Rating: **T_

_**Main Character: **Percy Weasley._

_**Summary:**Every boxing day he would visit the grave of the one person he thought could understand. Canon compliant but for those who hated the epilogue for reasons other than shipping._

_**A/N: **I don't consider the interviews to be canon. So if this contradicts anything she says in them, I'll be blunt and say this: I don't care. The only thing I took from the interviews is that Percy had two daughters. And that's it._

_Also be warned- I turn Harry's 'All is Well' line on its head. Plus if you think that the Weasley family or Harry and Hermione are all sweetness and light and oh-so-good I wouldn't continue. It's an epilogue and canon compliant fic for people who didn't like the epilogue for reasons other than shipping or hated how morally bankrupt the trio became as the books wore on._

--

Percy Weasley visited the grave once a year.

Every Boxing day, he would come to this very place and lay flowers upon the small mound. Every time he would sweep away the flowers, rotted and black from the year before, a slight pang of pity rising in him that no-one else deemed it fit to pay their own respects since last his last visit. Harry did not spend a penny towards the man, nor had Draco Malfoy since the funeral.

Percy Weasley had never had a good or bad relationship with the present deceased. He was a Weasley and a Gryffindor, so any idea that they could have been true colleagues or friends if he'd still been alive was laughable. But compared to his other siblings, Percy seemed to have been, at the very least, _tolerable_ to the Potions master. He got the work done, an O in potions for his troubles and in the end, that was good enough to save him from the head of Slytherin's continual wrath or getting multiple points taken off.

The reason why Percy visited the grave of Severus Snape was something he didn't want to have to explain, so it was one that he kept secret. It was just one of many secrets he kept locked away over the years from the old family.

Percy Weasley was more preceptive than most people realised, and the secrets he held these days mainly constituted to how he knew how others viewed him.

His old family hated him. That was what he knew.

His wife and daughters loved him, and even most of his nieces and nephews had grown a certain fondness for him, but it was no secret to him that most of his siblings, parents and their husband and wives disliked him. They hated him for what they perceived on the surface, for his apparent betrayal of them for the Ministry. They hated him for being the one who survived, when Fred, now in a graveyard several miles from here was no longer with them.

He knew they would have preferred it if he had been the one to die, especially George. The underlying hatred which lay in his eyes was always apparent. Percy knew the look all too well.

If he asked out loud they'd deny it, they'd possibly be outraged at his statement, but Percy knew the truth. They didn't fool him. They pretended to be One Big Happy Weasley Family, they strained to keep upturned mouths as they always did at Christmas and other visits, but he saw through their lies. He saw their looks of disapproval quickly covered by smiles which did not reach their eyes when they answered the door to him.

But that was not all he saw as he observed the old family.

He also, over the years, came to realise the way they favoured certain children over others, just as their own parents had done to them. Repeating the mistakes of the last generation. He saw the way that Hugo, Albus and Lily, the only three currently not of the house of Lions were treated differently than those who were.

Poor Lily, now just fresh from her first term at Hogwarts, he thought, clenching his hand into a fist, his knuckles turning white. Lily, the small red haired girl he had found crying under the stairs after Christmas dinner from her eldest brother's cruel words. Words, which she had repeated through her sobs as he'd held her, that were all too reminiscent of those a certain pair of brothers had once said to him on a less than cheerful Christmas; but rather than any real betrayal she received them all for the crime of the hat declaring she was a Slytherin.

Harry's own speech that he believed Slytherin house was a decent house in itself seemed to be all talk. Sometimes Percy wondered if giving Albus the name 'Severus' had all been but the presses benefit, so that they would quit badgering him when asked if he would honour the man in anyway. Why else would he name him after a man he still so clearly still hated? On the surface he treated Lily much the same despite going to an "inferior" house, but underneath, Percy saw the disapproval Harry and Ginny held. It was simply a more intensified version of the time when it became apparent that Albus was a Hufflepuff. Or Ron's less subtle indignation when Hugo was found to be a Ravenclaw in between. Even Hermione seemed to give an air of dissatisfaction when she had given the news to him of her son's sorting.

They wished for families to be all red and gold but did not get what they wanted. Only the darling eldest children had followed them into the lions den, the pit where bullying is hidden under the guise of harmless pranks. The younger children did not become clones of their parents and so stood out and were noticed. And Percy, much to his disgust observed how each of the parents treated them in turn, a distance and barrier placed for they were not as worthy. He doubted that it was intentional, and they were probably not even aware of it, but the parents treated them with less regard compared to the Gryffindor heirs.

Percy gave a snort at the ridiculousness of it all. The noise alerted a robin to his presence, who flew to perch on a frost bitten tree. The only evidence of its previous position was in the light sprinkling of the snow and frost which surrounded this place. The hat had claimed he would have done well in Slytherin or Ravenclaw himself and he sometimes wondered what would have happened had he not begged to be in Gryffindor.

The world needed the hard working, the clever and the determined just as much as the brave. Without them all the world would be a stagnant place of no intuition.

Which unfortunately the wizarding world seemed to be turning into as time wore on. Slow, stupid and morally bankrupt.

Their world was no different from before Voldemort's time bar a warmer acceptance of muggleborns, if the history books were any indication.

The sorting continued, despite every year the hat claiming its own redundancy. Werewolves were still treated like second class citizens as were goblins and centaurs treated without respect. House elves still obeyed and adored a self-masochistic existence as slaves, knowing and having no education to imagine any other way to live.

It was times like this he thanked the heavens his wife was a muggleborn. She had opened his eyes to the truth. No wonder they still kept their world a secret. No fair and decent muggle society would stand for such things to occur.

His daughters, brought up in a muggle primary school would have a larger chance of escaping the lies his own generation had injected. He could only hope this would be true. He almost prayed his daughters would be squibs, just so they could escape the place entirely, but he knew they were not. They'd both committed accidental magic. They were witches through and through. Next year, his elder daughter's first year would begin.

This is what he always did to the Professor's grave. He ranted, he raved at the injustice of it all. Fresh from the fake smiles of the old family the day before, he always had plenty to rant about.

For Percy, in his own strange way thought that Severus, if he'd been alive would have understood. Both were hated and isolated, used as pawns by Dumbledore. Both spies risking their lives for little thanks or care for what really happened to them in the end by others.

But that may have been why he had chosen them, as his eyes and ears of both Death Eaters and Government.

Both had already been hated, even as children. Percy by his brothers, Severus by his father and peers. They knew true hatred and resentment, they'd grown up in it from young ages. They put on the façade that it never really bothered them that their own personalities were not good enough for them to be loved by those they loved in turn. Percy had loved his siblings deeply despite their cruelty, yet they hated him for being little more than a little stuck up and uptight, something he freely admitted to being when he was younger.

The two men could deal with being despised at a level higher than other people could bear as they spied for they were used to it. Percy could handle deliberately estranging himself from his family to help the Order, Snape could do the same in the eyes of Hogwarts staff by killing Dumbledore.

Percy sometimes felt quite jealous that he got to do in that manipulative git. Because even if they had been a terrible family, they'd still been his. Cutting all contact had been difficult. Particularly mother, who although had to be bought into giving him affection by obeying her every whim at least showed him affection. Like a drug addict wanting his fix, they were unhealthy and bad for him but he had still loved them and felt he needed them at the same time.

However, in the end both men could separate themselves from others and survive, for they had already been estranged in reality from their fellow man. Percy had never been a _real_ part of the old family and they hadn't missed him, other than perhaps his mother. They contented themselves with the notion that they were better than he was. That somehow accepting that _awful, _and _traitorous_ Percy Weasley could mean they could mentally pat themselves on the back for being so _forgiving._

But Percy knew better.

For they were fools, fools riding on the false notion that everything was practically perfect apart from a few children who refused to be their copies. They were idiots who thought that slavery was fine if freedom was too difficult to come by. They were people who thought muggles were bad to kill but that it was somehow _fine_ to mess with their minds taking away their very free will to fit their own whims, like passing driving tests and other such tripe.

They were also the very same people who thought that red and gold was better than any other colours combined.

The lies would not be believed forever.

He'd promised himself they wouldn't be.

The present History of Magic professor looked down to the old Potion's master and gave a small nod as he tipped his cap to the gravestone.

For children were the future of their world.

For although a part of him respected and thought he understood him, Professor Weasley would not be like Severus, taking his anger and bitterness out on students. He would mould them, shape them and get them to ask questions about everything they saw and the mistakes their people had made. No sugar coating came from Percival Weasley's increasingly more popular history lessons. When the wizards had been in the wrong, he did not skim over the less than savoury details of their side as Binn's or the old textbooks had done. And that included very recent history.

For it was only in rare cases that our enemies are as evil as we think like to think they were, and maybe we are never quite as good.

The students would have to herald a new age and save the Wizarding World from itself.

The next generation would be better than the one before. Already the air crackled with the coming of change. It was inevitable. They had waited longer than was necessary. The time for revolution would soon be at hand.

The man's footsteps were already being filled from a light snow fall as he trudged towards the gate of the old church. He wondered at the possibilities of a new age. Of the possibility that the mistakes of history and the present would no longer be repeated in the future.

A place where perhaps not _all_ would be well, but a place that would at least be better than where they were now.

--

_A/N: Comments?_

_Written because I actually like Percy and I hated the last line of DH. There is nothing to indicate in the WW that 'All is well' and Harry's reassurance of Albus about Slytherin didn't seem genuine compared to what we've seen of him in previous canon._

_I know, Harry could have grown up and probably did a bit in 19 years, but this fic is still possible. What people say and what they feel can be very different. Even if he felt this way, I doubt Harry would say out loud that 'Gryffindors are the best' to his nervous son. He isn't heartless. But that doesn't mean he can't be a prejudiced underneath it all the same, same with Hermione or Ginny. Ron would probably not even be tactful. Their prejudice is probably something they wouldn't want to acknowledge but it would still be there._

_So kind of AU but also... not? Even with Percy secretly being a spy, it's still technically canon compliant, since of course he still could have been, you never know. And I like the idea myself. _

_My interpretation of the last line in the epilogue: there is no evidence to indicate that in the WW all is well, and there are a lot of horrible things which were around before Voldemort. Therefore, either everything changed for the better over 19 years (doubtful, what with Ron mind altering the driving instructor, which is disgusting, especially with Harry actually thinking it's funny) or Harry is completely deluding himself (very probable)._

_(Awaits flames)._

_._


End file.
